Fascinating image captured by telescope reveals mile-wide asteroid with its own mini moon as it passes the Earth at 43,000 mph

A fascinating image captures a close encounter with a rare double asteroid as it hurtled past Earth at 43,000 mph (70,000 kmph).

The blurry picture of the binary object known as 1999 Asteroid KW4 was captured by telescope on May 25th at a distance of some 3.2 million miles (5.1m km), according to the Daily Mail.

The image, revealed by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT), is sharp enough that we can see the two distinct objects.

Asteroid 1999 KW4 is not one but two objects - a larger space rock measuring about 0.8 miles (1.3 km) across and a small companion that orbits it. 

The speed which the double asteroids, which are separated by around 1.6 miles (2.6 km), were moving at made observing it exceptionally challenging, researchers said.

The hazy image is the actual photo snapped by scientists, and the image on the right is an artist’s interpretation of what the object might actually look like if we could see it perfectly clearly. 

The European Space Agency (ESA) has been tracking the pair as they steadily neared our planet ahead of the May 25 approach.